The Deal

"If a King needs gold, he shouldn't mind if it were melted, moulded to bars, handed by a thief, or stained by blood."

-A Noble's Guide to Statecraft

©

How lucky are the youth in love? Plum children holding hands, running far from the gaze of old, bony apathy. Every young lass of Dirge prays to learn of it, craning their neck as the young sailor drags along a hooded boy like a stitched doll, an over-used, ugly sight of envy from their eyes. Sion can detect their innocent malice through the tall glass windows, each beige blur observing Ian's hair of sun-washed snow.

Ian had been pulling his hand as if they were running from invisible wolves. If anything he is only slowing his friend down. He is not born quick and nimble with strong arms for hauling heavy nets, not even that much of a looker like Ian since he is instructed to stay unnoticed. "They gut foreigners 'round here in Dirge so I advise you to wear that hooded mask and pick up the coastal accent." his mum had enforced every morning. But that's the only thing she enforced upon him, it was his choice to dabble into the arts of alchemy which explains why he is scrawny- tip-toed while reaching on his mum's shelves when he was only two, grasping complex theories and practising equations while still in his nappies like a senile scholar and Miriam would just watch from the door, glad that she did not abandon the red-haired babe in a nearby brothel.

From the Master Alchemist's shelves, he studied the flora and fauna of Viridia, one province every week, one country every full moon. Clouds of dust and pages would flutter through his candle-lit face. Now that he is nine winters old he had finished two continents already. From every mushroom and bug that crawls the soil to the plants and fishes of the oceans, he knows them all. But the fish they caught earlier is too peculiar, a breed he never saw in one of Miriam's books and he needs to know of it- Ian knows of it.

"We're home!" Ian busted the apothecary door open, shaking each glassware into near-shatter. Thankfully none had broke, except for a nose flared woman that had stomped straight in front of them. Miriam smacked the boy on his head like it was her child, she knows that if San'drah were alive she'd do the same thing. "You felt that? that's how hard you opened my front door!" She chewed out.

"Why'd you even hit me? You're not my mum!" Ian complained, earning him a laugh from his hooded friend.

The Master Alchemist just rolled her eyes, the brat is too brave talking back at someone like her, a criminal of the country, a monster of the Dirgeans. It reminded her again of the child's mother who was the only soul in Dirge brave enough to visit her often in the apothecary just to share petty gossip over hot tea, submerging her in deep conversation until the teapot is emptied and the sun had sunk.

"Mark my words Ian, you're gonna wish I'm your mum." She mumbled before attending to her frightened customers.

"Right 'mum', and while I'm at it, I'll find a husband for you too!" Ian ran up to Sion's room locking themselves inside before Miriam could reach the boys. "Hmph, gays..." Miriam sneered.

Ian threw himself on Sion's haystack bed as if it were his own. Loosening the laces of his tunic and kicking off his shoes. "Snowberry, come'ere!" He gave his friend the finger, they've been playmates for four winters now and they just can't seem to stop.

"No!" He crossed his arms with a pout.

"If you don't come'ere I'll chase you 'round and kiss you!"

"You just try! Mum will whoop your bum!" Sion knows that as soon as he'll step close he would be pulled in and be treated like a girl, so he ran off, making the other boy chase him in circles.

Miriam rolled her eyes as dust fell on top of her head. She just let them be since a friend from youth is healthy for her son... or daughter. She found the babe with a hole underneath his scrotum, a bizarre characteristic only recorded rarely, but a commonality for the pure-bred ancestors of the tech-savvy Zhoutanian and science hoarding Navenxites... called the Choans.

Choans were a near-extinct race much like the Hydenians who had to breed with the land dwellers to survive. Their numbers greatly dwindled during the 1st era, their gigantic, impenetrable caves and Mosaic Cities are too safe from the strife of the surface world yet too secluded that a single disease wiped them off the map.

This resulted in a quick evolution rooted in desperate survivability.

During this present age, Miriam can only count with one hand all the known Choans of Viridia, and she had travelled the world.

"I'll come and getcha!"

"Ian! No means no!" Sion had cut the chase, turning around and planting his tiny feet down to face his taller friend.

"Alright." Ian mirrored his stance, they stood there looking like serious politicians discussing peace treaties.

"Why do you want to kiss me? I'm a boy like you!"

"But you're a girl too!"

"Huh?" The insides of Sion's mask heated, "I'm more of a boy than a girl!"

"Aye, and I don't care." The Fisher boy dared with narrowed eyes.

"Fine! If you promise to be honest... I'll let you kiss me."

"Deal!"

Sion smirked beneath his mask, his friend had blindly fallen into his trap. So, he offered his masked cheek to him, closing his eyes to expect the kiss.

"I can't kiss you with that! Remove your mask!"

"Oh no..." the hooded boy thought to himself. Her mum's warnings about the Dirgefolks and their dislike of Foreigners resounds in his head. But this is Ian, there's no way his friend could hate him.

"What are ya waiting for?" the taller boy neared his puckered lips.

Upon the drop of his hooded mask, Ian's jaw did too. Heart hammering against his young chest at the sight of the new boy before him. His fresh brain can't fathom how a mask can contain too much beauty underneath, hair searing red that it had burned through his eyes, thinking it would burn his fingers too if he were to feel them.

Ian ran away, painful flowers blooming within his chest, knees weakened and feet stumbling down the flight of stairs. He pulled Miriam's arm from her counter as she was handing out near-expired medicine, with his grip trembling he said, "Let me marry your son!" Before escaping out from the Apothecary door, a madman in the making. He left the scene with the poverty-driven consumers frightened and a Master Alchemist smiling.

"Told ya you'd want to have me as your mum." Miriam whispered to herself.

From that day, Sion never learned about the mysterious fish they had caught, his friend never brought it up too. Ian still frequents the apothecary but he never mentioned wanting a kiss from his friend ever again, he wants to earn it instead. That remained until he became a sailor, a famous one who was always invited to parties, from the Lonesome Isles to Crestine, Witch's Tongue to Soap Port, even to the rich islands of Tri-state and the barbaric lands of Bannar, he was circling different countries and only coming back every end of a week, unlike his peers who regularly voyage through many moons. It may be limiting his potential but he just can't miss a single morning sail with Sion by the white cliff's coast, so he comes back more often than the average sailor at the cost of experience.

"Mum! I'm home!" Ian would often announce. He'd go straight to the apothecary to rest instead of his uncle's Inn whenever he returns from his long sails, even in the middle of the night.

But this night is different, Miriam was waiting for him by the apothecary's living room with a sorrowful frown lit by a dying candle, she had been waiting a long time, her struggle evident in her expression as she's trying to find the right words.

"Where's Sion." Ian worried, Miriam managed to chuckle thinking how the young sailor have his priorities straight.

"He's sleeping upstairs safe and sound, but we have to talk first."

"Then talk." He sat down by the fireplace, back turned against Miriam as he kindle the few remaining firewoods.

"Geraldine Prudence, the great-granddaughter of Queen Ingrid, returned when you were gone."

"And how does that shit concern me?" Ian closed his eyes, the wood in front of him crackling and breaking from the red fire that envelopes it, he misses the boy upstairs.

"Listen here pig, she had shut down the Black markets when you were gone so this 'shit' concerns you a lot..."

Ian ignored her words, thinking that Miriam had gone mad from too much chemical exposure.

"and Sion is in trouble too."

"Huh?" He rose quick, enough to cause Miriam's candle to die.

"Ah, for a second I thought I was speaking to a brick wall. Remember when you proclaimed that you'll marry Sion when you were kids? He told me that night that you caught three long and shiny coin-coloured fishes..."

"Ah, so you finally knew. I can buy Dirge when I was 10, you want money? I can give it to you if that's all you want 'mum'." Ian sat down in front of her.

"Don't be shallow you little fuck, that's not my point. The reason why the Blackmarket burned down was that someone's uncle decided to sell the three sacred fishes to the highest bidders outside of Sovenia. Imagine the distraught of the Glacial Council..." Miriam glared at him, "and do you know who they've been trying to hunt down? Ah yes... The three idiots who caught the three fishes."

"But no one saw us that day, and Uncle Khod said it was a clean transaction."

"Almost a clean one, you lucky shits. They closed the case because Captain Sunker pointed fingers and used it to frame Gorebones. Now they're hunting the man down, but I doubt they can follow him inside Lonesome Isles."

"Is that all? I don't get why we should worry, Sunker always sinks the ship of his enemies, Gorebones is now a man framed forever." Ian dismissed, he was about to walk up to Sion's room but Miriam pulled his hand.

"No, Sunker may have saved your asses but only because he knows of the truth. I forgot to mention, Him and his crew went here yesterday..."

"What?" blood retreated from Ian's fists. "What did they want?"

"Nothing... It was strange, he asked if I have any of your mother's old things. And he was asking for your and Sion's well being."

"Why in Viridia's realm would that old crone do that?"

"Can't you fucking see boy? He's hinting at his intentions, playing a game with you lots. If he grows a brain both you and your uncle would be in jail with Sion... But I won't let that happen, not to my Son! he won't be branded as a criminal like his fuck-tard shitty mum!"

This is serious, he didn't catch how Miriam masked her fear with anger all along. It frightened him how someone he looked up to can falter like this.

"No, no, don't worry, I won't let that happen to him too. I can rot to jail for all I care.,but Sion has no part of this. None of the Dirgeans had seen his face right? I'll make sure, I'll make sure..."

And he made sure. Small Brock, Astrid the Shepherd, Jorgen the Scout and his dog, Old Beltild, the Farmer near the Whitecliff, a foreign lass washed away at the black beach... His victims were countless and nameless. He made sure that the last sight they had seen was at least a sight worthy to die for- the face of Sion, and each time he witnessed their last breath, a crack is added to the dam that has been keeping his sanity.

He had to make sure no live men had seen Sion just in case the authorities traced back to them and locked them up for life. If that ever happened, at least his little snowberry could just run away and start a new life free of concealment, free of him.

But later that night Miriam moved on her own, tongue collecting old words of revelation... The cause of why Captain Sunker had an early retirement, rotting away on the harbours with an unknown ailment.